A mountain climber in the high Andes, after having fallen because his climbing partner felt he had no alternative but to cut the rope between them or lose his own life, had no options left to him except to go down into an ice crevice, trailing a severely broken and painful leg. With his life in the balance, there was no possibility of going in the direction he most wanted to go to survive — up. His only option at that point was to descend into the dark and hope he would emerge in a place where he could find a way out and to safety.
Similarly, there may be times when we too have no choice but to go further into the dark and persevere through the horror, the suffering — with perhaps not even a glimmer of any realistic “solution” or end to any of it on the horizon. There is simply no alternative. But how we go into it makes a huge difference. In his case, miraculously, the climber found a way out and survived.
When we suffer, the poignancy of the circumstances always has a sense of uniqueness to it. And for good reason. Whatever is happening is happening to us, not to somebody else. It is always accompanied by a story as we try desperately to explain the unexplainable to ourselves. Suffering can suddenly arise, in any of its infinite manifestations, unexpectedly in the middle of our very rich and textured lives and relationships, hopes and dreams, histories and unfinished business. It may signal the end of something, it may signal irreparable loss. Events can dash all hopes and dreams in an instant, rend the fabric of our lives, turn everything upside down, and destroy what is most beautiful and loveable. There is no denying this.
What the practice of mindfulness offers us is a way to be in relationship to this enormity, to this poignancy, and to the particulars of the narrative — even when it seems impossible for us or anyone else to do anything. It invites us to be willing, over and over again in the face of even our own overwhelm, reluctance, and despair, to turn toward what we most want to turn away from. It invites us to accept what seems beyond accepting and to experiment with embracing the actuality of it with a sense of enormous kindness toward ourselves. This is a practice — one that can only unfold over time.
We embrace what is occuring in awareness and acceptance because we have no viable and intelligent alternative. And we embrace it not as a form of passive resignation or surrender, as we have seen, but as a way of being in wiser relationship to what is, to what has been, and to the unknowableness of what will unfold. And we undertake it only within our capacity of any moment.
There is strength in this. There is a quiet dignity in this. And it is not contrived. It is not forced. It is not a romantic idealization of a special state of being. It is not the enacting of a method or a technique. It is not the implementation of a philosophy. It is one human being or a group of people or a society standing in full awareness in the poignancy of what is. This is what the practice of mindfulness actually cultivates: a willingness to rest in the not knowing, in the awareness of both knowing and not knowing, and respond appropriately to whatever it is that needs attending to in this moment, within the circumstances we find ourselves, with kindness toward oneself and toward those who most need our tenderness and our clarity.
Herein lies liberation from suffering. The liberation is in the practice itself, and in each moment when we can take refuge in the domain of not knowing. Out of such moments, we can take action even in the face of loud interior narratives that predict hopelessness, despair, and failure. Even in the moments when we do lose our mind and our heart, in the next moment or whenever we are ready, we can begin again, and again, and again. We can return over and over to something deep within ourselves that is steady, that is reliable, that is whole — and that is not a thing.